How old is your hardware?

Something that's fascinated me since I became a PC enthusiast in the 1990s is the economy surrounding the hardware industry. It’s incredibly disjointed in some ways, and heavily reliant on other segments of itself in others. For instance, software, such as games or new operating systems, can dramatically drive forward new generations of hardware kit.

On the flip-side, hardware can drive itself forward, with one release spawning other releases. CPUs and motherboards are the classic example, and we’re seeing the exact same thing with Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge CPUs and motherboards equipped with the Z77 chipset. We all want the latest hardware of course. It provides better frame rates, sexier visuals,or in the case of PSUs, can even save money on your electricity bill.

However, while our industry relies on new hardware and people’s willingness or need to buy it, there are plenty of people out there that are quite happy with seriously old kit. We’re not talking about a generation or two out of date either. We’re talking about three or four generations old, and the hardware was never particularly impressive when it was new either. Some of the graphics cards are barely DirectX 9 compatible, yet these people are keen gamers.

ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro was a great graphics card in its day, but many gamers still use ancient hardware to play games.

Several people I know have only recently upgraded from graphics cards such as the ATI 9600 Pro (now AMD of course) or the Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT. An interesting look into just how many people are using quite aged hardware is the Steam Hardware and Software Survey. Currently updated as of April this year, and with numerous bug fixes that now tell a more accurate story of newer PCs, it shows some interesting facts about the PC gamers out there.

Nearly 10 per cent of those surveyed use DirectX 9 and below-capable graphics cards – a figure that’s roughly similar when it comes to single-core CPU usage too. The latter suggests quite a few people are still rocking with elderly Intel LGA775 and AMD Socket 939 systems – both of which were the turning points for the switch to dual core CPUs. Likewise, the Nvidia GeForce 8800 series is still massively popular and with a figure of just over 30 per cent attributed to ‘other’ for video card description, it’s likely this number is made of substantial numbers of even older graphics cards.

Steam, of course, is home to a wide variety of games. One explanation for the large numbers of old systems is that many games simply don’t need cutting edge hardware. 2D-based games are prime examples of where a half decent CPU is all that’s needed. This argument might go some way to explaining why some people are still using hardware that was already half a decade old when President Obama was victorious in the 2008 presidential election. However, I know from personal experience that many people simply play very old games, or are quite happy dropping the settings of more modern games to hideous levels in order to play them with acceptable frame rates.

They’re passionate gamers, and many must have the money to upgrade (after all, an upgrade from a 9600 Pro can probably be had for half the cost of a tank of petrol these days, even less second hand). Maybe they're console gamers first, PC gamers second? There are some other more promising facts in the survey though. Windows 7 64-bit is now by far the most common operating system, and Windows XP is more popular than Windows Vista (even Microsoft admitted it wasn’t a great OS). This is a clear sign that gamers are at least buying new PCs or opting for Microsoft's new operating system.

The Steam Hardware and Software survey makes for some fascinating reading into what kind of PCs are out there and what the most popular hardware is.

More importantly, the most popular graphics cards are now those from the GeForce GTX 560 series, undoubtedly due to the serious price drops the series has had thanks to new hardware launches, while Intel HD Graphics 3000 are close behind. The latter might make you cringe to think of all the poor souls out there using what is essentially integrated graphics for games, but don’t forget that the HD 3000 series means they’re also sporting a very modern Intel CPU, which is all you need to play some of the simpler, less graphically-demanding games on Steam.

Game graphics comparisons such as this Battefield 3 one clearly show just how much better the game looks at high settings. Clearly there may be many reasons why someone might not have modern-enough hardware in their PC to play games at high settings, and after all, many people would say it's better to play the game, even at low settings than to not play it at all.

For me it’s an alien concept not to want great graphics though. It’s half the joy of buying and playing a new game, especially one that’s had thousands of man hours put into the visuals as well as the actual gameplay such as those in the Crysis or Battlefield series'. I’ve even held off playing new games in the past, just so I could save up to get the hardware needed to play them at decent settings. For that reason, the core hardware in my PC is rarely older than two to three years, although I'm quite happy to relent and drop in mid-range hardware and not pay a small fortune on the latest must-have gear. I also upgrade because other tasks I use my PC for such as photo editing, would see improvements too, so upgrading isn't just a game-related urge.

I’d be genuinely interested to know how old your hardware is, how often you upgrade and if you or anyone you know has some seriously old gear kicking around and what games they actually play. Let us know in the comments.

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My oldest components are less than 6 months old (pretty much the whole rig), my newest is 3 weeks old (SSD). The longest I've had components for was my i7-920 CPU which went through 2x motherboards and countless other upgrades. I had it for 3 years. That's the longest I've ever had a single PC component I think... with the possible exception of my old X-Fi soundcard... I think I had that for 4 years... but I tend to think of soundcards in teh same way as keyboards, mice and monitors.... they tend to last longer.

I don't include keyboards and monitors in this, as they don't age very much, although my keyboard and monitor are around the same age, at around 2 years approx.

Those keen enough to look at the specs should notice a trend, its a dedicated 3dfx glide rig, I had to hunt for parts as most just weren't available in South Africa,others I had to fix, like replacing caps on the V5500, it was a fun build and is neering completion, should be done next week some time.

While I could have easily ran DosBox and a glide wrapper, it just isnt the same as running games on actual hardware, glide wrappers dont do nearly as good a job as a real Voodoo 2-5 , things look smoother and more refined on the system.

And I dont have to worry about compatibility problems on any of my older favorite games, its simply install and play.

Youll be surprised what that little P3 can do, it works great with Firefox 8 and some newer apps once you install KernelEX,its nearing completion now and should be done in the next week or so.

my PC is only 18 months old, but I imagine I will keep that for atleast another 12 months.
My Laptop is from 2001 and rocks with 1ghz CPU and 1 gig ram, runs windows vista basic and is "always on", i have no plans to change that :)
I also had old PC kit going back 10 years in my attic before I moved recently, but took the opportunity to finally get rid of it when i did move house.

I got most of my kit either from ebay or from friends who upgraded.
I ended up with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 4gb DDR2 on an IP35 mobo, and an ATi HD5870. Still fast enough for all my needs, plays battlefield 3 at high settings. Only upgrade i can see is maybe an ssd soon but otherwise i'm very happy with previous generation hardware.

I recently moved from my aging C2Q to a 3570k, and I love it. My upgrade cycle tends to be 3-4 years, apart from GPU's which are more like 2+3 years. Oldest part for me now? My tripple HDDs I think, they're 4 years old...

Traditionally my oldest part is generally my soundcard. For many years it was audigy 2 ZS when all those around me had XPies or Xonars. Then when I finally changed to an XPie Tit - all it did was crash my PC so I changed to Auzentech X-Meridian 2G. My GPU is GTX 680, mobo Z68, i5k, I guess my case is old. PSU a few years old. 1 old 1tb samsung hard disk, the rest is new.

I'd love to upgrade to a new MB/CPU/RAM config but I can still play most modern games at full monitor resolution (1920x1200) at pretty much full detail settings and really should keep the cash for more boring things. I do get tempted though.

The rig I have here is a few years old now but I never have any particular problems with it. The issue is that games just haven't been evolving as quickly in the past few years.

It's quite nice having an old computer as you're more familiar with it; I know exactly what goes wrong with it and how to fix it. My brother still uses the first PC I ever built (Athlon 4200+ so not that old) with a few upgrades.

Yup - goes AT to PS/2 to USB. Works a treat, mind - aside from the lack of cursor keys, six-key home pad, F11, F12, Alt.Gr, Super and the Euro symbol. (Mind you, reading the financial press, I'm not sure for how much longer that last omission will be problem.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpreadieI threw my last IBM board in the skip about a year or so ago.

Got a SSD recently but that's the first upgrade I've had for over a year since my last gfx upgrade (to a 6850). CPU (Q6600) was about 3 years ago. Not much requirement to upgrade at the moment but I keep an eye on the gfx card releases.

Got an Audigy card that I must have had at least 5 years and I've replaced it a couple of times but never been happy with the new cards so ended up going back to it.

Oldest peripherals I still use are the Altec Lansing speakers from my first PC purchase back in '98.

Originally Posted by Scott109I got most of my kit either from ebay or from friends who upgraded.
I ended up with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 4gb DDR2 on an IP35 mobo, and an ATi HD5870. Still fast enough for all my needs, plays battlefield 3 at high settings. Only upgrade i can see is maybe an ssd soon but otherwise i'm very happy with previous generation hardware.

Same but on an NVidia 9300 chipset .... I'm looking to upgrade for a mini-ITX H67 + i5-2400, The Q6600 and its GF 9300 IGP will be perfect as a small Linux server. My upgrade cycle is like 4 years for hardware, 8 - 10 years for monitor (change when they die :D) and never for the case (unless it is too big or too small .... but the Lian-Li PC-V1000 is unlikely to be too small ).

Originally Posted by Gareth HalfacreeYup - goes AT to PS/2 to USB. Works a treat, mind - aside from the lack of cursor keys, six-key home pad, F11, F12, Alt.Gr, Super and the Euro symbol. (Mind you, reading the financial press, I'm not sure for how much longer that last omission will be problem.)

SACRILEGE!

I kept it for years, always threatening to spray it up and give it a new lease of life; but it was frikkin LOUD, man. :)

Originally Posted by GuilleAcousticI have the same ;) .... was on my old IBM PC. Rock solid and heavy as hell, I'll never trade it :D

I've got to admit, I'm tempted to upgrade - the missing keys are a pain. Can't decide whether to go for a Cherry-switched keyboard (I'm tempted by the Filco Majestouch with Cherry Black linear switches) or a modern buckling-spring keyboard as close to the IBM ideal as possible. Like this one, in fact - although that *still* doesn't have Super keys, for no readily apparent reason.

Oldest kit I have in my current machine is an old Hitachi HDD. an old 160 gig from before perpendicular recording, and locked to SATA1 by firmware (they can be shifted to SATA 2 for a big speed boost, never got around to it myself). Slow, small, and a bit loud when spinning up, but it holds movies just fine. A close second s my beloved TT120, age of water cooling my ass, my rig set the geekbench record for i5 rigs on the forums with a 7 year old air cooler.

other than that I have an old 6800gt I use for emergency's and troubleshooting, almost put it in my HTPC to save cash but I found a refurbed lower-end ati card with native HDMI for next to nothing.

At my local tech shop I was rummaging through a clearance bin and found a Voodoo 4 that had obviously fallen off a shelf decades ago (unopened box, a little damaged cardboard). I was quite tempted to grab it, but I just couldn't make a good enough excuse.

Pentium Dual-Core E5200 2.5GHz, clocked to 3.75GHz (Nope, not even a C2D)

4GB DDR2

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L

Radeon HD6770 1GB

That plays anything I throw at it with high-quality settings and at 1080p - at my monitors native res (1680*1050) it's even better. Therefore I see utterly no need to upgrade at the moment. It's by no means ancient hardware, but it's not exactly recent either; plus that chip is a beast for overclocking - I reckon I could easily get it past 4GHz with PC2-8500 RAM, if PC2-8500 DDR2 RAM wasn't so expensive. I am considering an SSD, but that's about the only upgrade I have planned - even then I'm not sure whether to give the SSD to my laptop or keep it for the desktop.

Speaking of laptops, mine is pretty old by todays standards, too:

ThinkPad X61s (originally released in 2007)

CULV C2D 1.6GHz

2GB DDR

Crappy Intel IGP

120GB HDD

Yet again that still runs damn fast, has amazing battery life and is in no danger of being replaced any time soon. As above, I may give it an SSD, but I'm starting to doubt whether I even need that - since switching to Debian pretty much full time it's running much nippier than it did under Win7.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MiNiMaL_FuSSµTorrent 29.41%
BitComet 2.44%

Utorrent would appear to have the torrent market sewn up. I myself have been a utorrent owner, but find they are now sneaking in a lot of excessive bloatware.

It's the externals that have lasted longest for me, my Yamaha YST-M200 speakers are the oldest part of the kit now, still trucking after 13 years, (and the oldest HP printer is now 12 years old).

The subtitle of the article is a timely one though, since my 4670's coming up 4 years old but showing its age in Tribes Ascend and would barely run the title screen of Battlefield, it's had a good run for only my second ever PCI-E card but the 560Ti's going to be next, as that can be kept for the proper new build next year.

Agreed with the dude;s reply, most of my stuff is not that old either. Since my first rig was created during the launch of the Core i7 920 the oldest part is not more than 4 years old... I think. That would be the X-Fi soundcard. I do hate the drivers though. Although regarding that the only upgrade would come in the form of a Wavio series soundcard from Onkyo, the highest end model which is quite expensive...

My 1TB hard drive must be the oldest bit from mid 2010 I think. It would have been my 500GB, but that broke and was replaced.
Before that I had a C2D 2GHz, 2GB DDR2, 8600GTS. That was a very trusty PC, but is was time for an upgrade, which happened about a year ago.

I still have an AMD x2 cpu, rocking just 2GB of RAM, they are my oldest bits of kit, probably around 4-5 years old now, lost track! They have been solid tho, iv recently upgraded GPU from 9800gt to 5970 2GB and recently bought a new Corsair PSU 850W. Im looking to do my 5 year upgrade this summer to an i7 3820 and a gigabyte ud3/ud5 havent decided, thinking this will keep me steady for a good 5 years, seeing as im not a hardcore gamer but do like to play new titles at full just love how good things look, use to remember playing Worms and Duke Nuekm thinking the graphics were good,lol

Originally Posted by Scott109I got most of my kit either from ebay or from friends who upgraded.
I ended up with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 4gb DDR2 on an IP35 mobo, and an ATi HD5870. Still fast enough for all my needs, plays battlefield 3 at high settings. Only upgrade i can see is maybe an ssd soon but otherwise i'm very happy with previous generation hardware.

This.

Have exactly the same setup that i've been rocking for a few years. Looking to upgrade in a couple of months. Really want to play Witcher 2 with Ubersampling on at 1920x1080. 670 here i come!

My flatmate is rocking my old Athlon x2800 with an X800. In fact he hardly uses it now and instead relies on a netbook he got brand new for £160 two years ago. He works from home so he uses it lots and NEEDS a PC...this man is not short of money, he can afford much much better.

I have had a full PC rebuild twice in that time. My family have my old Q6600 with 460GTX and I am using an original i7 with 2x570GTX's.

I just love to mess with old hardare - and improve it if possible.
My oldest baby is a 386 25MHz which I keep to run the original Civ and Wing Commander 1; I have to enter the HD data everytime I switch it on since the battery is a non-replaceable one and long gone.
My favorite rig at the moment is based on a ASUS TX97-X which I recently improved with an AMD K6-III 400MHz from a K6-II 300MHz. MechWarrior 3 just rocks on it with the Diamond Monster 3d2 (3dfx Voodoo2)!!!

Well, my rig is over a year old now (2500K/P8P67-M Pro/560 Ti) but I plan to hang on to it for quite a while. I don't currently see any impending upgrade needed for it (though the CPU could do with a better cooler) simply because the 560 Ti handles pretty much everything I play at 1080p maxed out. It'll probably be upgraded the moment I buy a game that cannot be played at high settings.

The hardware in D33P THOUGHT wasn't the most up to date, socket 1336 1st gen i7, and I really don't think that the newest hardware of today has moved the game along significantly enough to justify upgrading. I tend only to upgrade when a new Battlefield title is in the pipeline. My current system eats BF3 for breakfast.

My hardware is coming up to a year old (i5, 8GB, 6790M). Not that it's upgradable. It's a Mac.

Prior to that I has a Q6600, 8GB, 275GTX which I'm pretty sure had it not been for buying a Mac would have been upgraded late last year to an i5 with GTX560. I tended up upgrade my system around every 18 months with maybe a component upgrade (gfx, more ram, etc) in between full upgrades.

The wife has an Asus i3 laptop but having low requirements she'll havwe that for quite some time.

I tend to do rolling upgrades as the money is available, with the last being the graphics card (but even that will be a while ago). Currently the plan is to replace the MB, CPU and RAM before to long as these are bottlenecking the GPUs performance a bit; and I'll probably go to 8GB DDR3 (I would go to 8GB RAM now but DDR2 is really expensive now :()

Unfortunately my Dell 2407WFP died recently, so a lot of my budget has gone on replacing that instead of in to the PC like it should have done... still I am rocking an awesome Dell U2410 (yes, it really is awesome)!

I have been running Windows 7 since it's beta builds, and still running w7 on my PC; but my laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) is running windows 8.

I have my X58 i7-920 build from maybe 4 years ago, did upgrade ram and graphics last year from 4890 to 560Ti. Still does everything I want but imagine I will go for Ivy Bridge upgrade now it has arrived :-). Prior to this I had a Pentium III 550 with a Geforce 256 card while this rocked at the time (probably 1990 it had become little more than a fan heater at the end)

Prior to my HD 5850 I had an 8800GT which managed BF3 fine on low settings. I only switched it out because I got it cheap and felt like some "new" hardware.

I really struggle to see why someone would upgrade a 2 year old system that's more than capable of running whatever you throw at it. to me the difference on running a game on medium instead of ultra high, is not always that huge a difference, and so, something I would throw a shitload of money after.

Originally Posted by DBAI really struggle to see why someone would upgrade a 2 year old system that's more than capable of running whatever you throw at it. to me the difference on running a game on medium instead of ultra high, is not always that huge a difference, and so, something I would throw a shitload of money after.

Exactly. I understand wanting to have the latest and greatest, but I think that there are a lot of people out there wasting their money. Of course, it's theirs to waste...

Until I upgraded quite recently, my rig was positively ancient. A Pentium4 at 3.2Ghz, 2Gb Ram, and a Geforce FX5600. Then that was upgraded to an ATI 4470 a couple of years ago.

Truth be told, I usually operate on a "need to upgrade" basis. The only reason I abandoned my Geforce was that Fallout 3 dropped to single digit frame rates in certain screens featuring lots of shaders. And even then it was a last resort and I chose a pretty budget replacement.

Most games do run fine on older hardware. If you aren't interested in playing games with better graphics, you rarely need to upgrade. Battlefield 3 on Low looks the same as Half-Life 2 on High, and if you're happy with Half-Life 2 on High why do you need to upgrade? It takes some seriously ancient hardware for a game to literally be either too unplayable or too ugly to enjoy.

I reckon my current rig will last me another five years or so, and then I might upgrade graphics card a little bit. Certainly I reckon it won't be until at least 2017 until there is a game released my rig physically won't play.

My main systems are in my sig but am also using a nice P4-HT and 2gb DDR1 as a storage computer for stuff I want long term, it serves it's purpose quite well

Age of hardware doesn't bother me much, I like gaming but am happy with medium setting (used to basic graphics as am still ocking R6 Vegas 2 with mate on the 360) plus the money you get for old parts s minimal, a working test unit is a better option.

Gladly though I think am due a mobo upgrade soon, which will mean CPU and RAM, oh well

I've literally just updated my ancient 7800GTX for a 550 GTX Ti. As for the rest of the system, I've pretty much just moved from an archaic C2D to a nice shiny Sandy Bridge i3 (which will jump to an i5 in 6 months or so)

At the moment my screen is a 19" widescreen with a resolution of 1440x900. I don't really need the highest performing card to run games at a decent framerate at that res and I'm not going to be getting a new screen anytime soon due to my living arrangements for the next few years.

The final point is money - what money I have remaining after bills, the taxman and fuel gets split between savings, gaming, airsofting and having a social life. Dropping £200+ on a processor just isn't going to happen.

Seeing as a lot of new games at the moment are console ports, I've not had any trouble running anything so far. In fact nothing seems to have taxed the latest version of my system at all - although it's early days still.

So there you go - most of my hardware is fairly new, but most of it has been out for over a year so is at least last gen. Before last weekend, it was around 5 - 7 years old.

Still...the transition to a 120gb + 80gb storage solution to a 2tb + 80gb was a lovely transition to make. No more sitting in the red constantly for HDD space.

The rig in my sig is going strong, upgraded a few bits last year. I need a new ssd but unfortunately no money for one at the moment. The only thing I can't run absolutely full spec seems to be BF3 at 1920x1200 but it looks awesome anyways and I'm not really bothered. There was a time when that would have been unacceptable but I reckon I've managed to kick the upgrade habit for now

I use a lot of old tch in my pc and it still trounces the games i play.

I'm using a i7 950 and a sapphire 5870(only recently upgraded from 5850 as i had a waterblock for it lying around)

Games like TF2
Borderlands
mass effect 2(still need to go get an origins account grrr)
and indie games such as the killing floor or heist all run with full settings at m 2048x1156 res

That said i dare say that once i get round to getting BF3 and ofcourse borderlands 2 (drools) it'll be time to get an upgrade to a 600 series card but 3 years ain't bad for a system specially since the 1366 will last me a few years still.

The thing I find most interesting about the steam survey is that whilst 70% of people "have a mic" only 40-50% of people have voice coms (40% + 18% TS next highest voice com less overlap). Also TS > Vent and no Mumble?

I usually upgrade GPU every 1-2 years and CPU/Mobo every 2-4. Storage takes a looooooooooooooong time for me to get around to, but I did it right with my last upgrade. With everything under water and a strict requirement for near-silence I tend to stay more static than my enthusiast brethren.

Let's see. This rig is rocking an AMD FX-6100 on an ASUS M5A99X EVO, with 16GB (4x4GB) of Patriot DDR-3 RAM. And then my upgrade funds ran WAY out. So it's also rocking a GeForce 9600GT, 250GB hard-drive, all in an Apevia X-Supra case, and hooked up to an Acer P223W 23" (1680x1050) monitor. Still, does very well (Especially now it's not starved for RAM).

I upgrade my cpu/ram/mobo every four to five years. Before my i7 920 I had an AMD X2 4600. Graphics get similar treatment if I can help it. I had my 8800GTX for five years, and only recently when that died and it got replaced by evga under warranty, by a gtx 460, I've decided to buy a gtx 580, which I got just as the 680 was announced. I'm using their step-up to get a GTX 670. Hopefully that will keep me happy for a few years.

I tend to keep my hardware as long as it lasts me to be honest. While I like to drool over the reviews of the latest i7s and the photos bit-tech members have posted of their immaculate, water cooled, LED lit gaming beasts, my rig does everything I need it to. Oldest part would be the Q6600, but paired with an HD5670 OC for light gaming and Eyefinity, and a brand new M4 SSD, it flies along.

An AMD Athlon XP3200+ and an X1600 GPU, built in 2004. Aside from the obvious (loud, slow, only goes up to DX9) it's... fine. I'm always looking at building a new PC, but the damn thing just keeps trucking (and truckin' and truckin'). Also, real life and my obsession with bikes gets in the way, a nice new silent PC isn't much cop against a week in Les Gets.
.
If it'll run CS:S that's me happy.

I recently did what FaSMaN is doing so I could play my old games without any compatibility issues. I found it a pain in the arse building it though, drivers being the biggest problem. Still can't get the Sound Blaster Live! sound card to work, having to use onboard at the moment. Spec here.

An even older build currently holds the lowest score on the bit-tech Geekbench table.

On May 2011 Computer magazines told the story of who great socket 1156 was and above all
how future proof it was,so I was happy because I had just build a PC with an Asus 1156 board.
On May 1012 my PSU died and I give a look over the Internet for a good PSU and a motherboard socket 1156,for a moment I feared that the mobo was dead too!
I could not find a motherboard socket 1156 of any brand on any of my favourite on line shop,
from Overclockers uk to Scan,Aria E-Buyer and many others.
with the coming of socket 1155 the old 1156 and my i5 760 = 20/30 slower than a 1155 i5 2500k sandy bridge cpu is confined to history.
Is a rig with an Asus P7P55D and i5 760 old hardware?
AMD take better care of they customer,
Intel has the arrogance of the winner!

I only recently updated from my e8400 c2d to and i5 2500k. P35 mobo to Z68. 4 Gig of DDR2 to 8 DDR3. I've had the SSD (Vertex 2) for about 16 months ...

My media server, on the other hand, is much older. Athlon 64, 1.8Ghz, and I don't even know what mobo it's got. 1.5GB DDR rocking WinXP, and about a terabyte of storage for movies and music. I really need to upgrade that one, though ... likely with the e8400 kit mentioned above ...

I only just upgraded from a Q6600 and gtx 280 recently because a replacement PSU was faulty & I replaced the whole system (over 6 months) trying to solve the problem. My new hardware is still out of date though ! AMD 5870 & AMD Phenom II X6 1100T.

For the record my old system would still play the latest games much better than any current console !

my secondary computer that is in daily use are running on a Tyan K8WE motherboard i bought back in 2005. had 2 opteron 242 i got cheap on it , 4x512mb no-name memory sticks and a Geforce 6800GT at that time. have upgraded it trough stuff i have found cheap on ebay. last year i bought a pair of Opteron 890, 2 Patriot Wildfire 120gb and a Raedon 6990. and 2years ago i bought 8x1gb with Corsair XMS 400mhz cl2.5 Reg ECC memory-sticks.
runs like a dream still and doubt the motherboard will die anytime soon...

I bought my whole rig last year in hope it would last for at least 3 years. I'm still confident that will be the case. The only thing that pisses me off is how the SATA III controller of my board sucks balls and limits my SSD to about 40% of its max performance. That's very, very irritating

My rig is a good 4 years old now, saved hard over one summer at uni and built it all and since then I'v been chronically poor so havent got round to building a new one yet. Hopefully going to get round to that when the 8000/700 series GFX cards and next Intel CPU's are about.
At the mo this is what is grinding along (perfectly well... ish, apart from vista anyway...)

The GFX card is old but I'v been impressed with its ability to keep up, and recently I'v just decided if it doesn't look pretty enough on my main monitor I switch it over to my other monitor which is only 17" not 21". Problem solved :P

Game graphics comparisons such as this Battefield 3 one clearly show just how much better the game looks at high settings.

I don't know about you but I personally don't see much of a difference between the highest and the lowest settings in that video.

Not just you, I can't really see that much difference either.

Some settings in some games make a massive difference to the gaming experience, (distance settings in the Elder Scrolls games for example) but a lot of the so-called 'eye candy' in other games - I really struggle to see the difference in a lot of it. If I'm running running around like a demented lunatic chasing/running away from someone, I generally don't stop to admire whether the shadows on the grass under my feet are being realistically rendered or not...

I'm currently using a 9800gt 512mb and an old athlon dual core which I think was recommended in the Buyers Guide when I built the PC a couple years ago. Definitely due for an upgrade (to be honest, it could have done with an upgrade the day I bought the parts ). I'm gonna wait for the mid range Kepler's to come out I think as the graphics card is the main priority at the minute then I'll probably go intel (whatever's cheap).

It is a little annoying having such outdated hardware but I don't have as much time to just relax and play games as I would like 'cause of uni so it's not too bad. Besides, I'm still working my way through Half Life so there's plenty of good old stuff out there that I can run until I get some money together :D

A few things have changed:
- on my third PSU
- third GPU, (from ATI 9600 Pro, to x1650, to current X1950)
- third HSF, (Stock, to Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2, to current Zalman Copper Flower).
Lost track of the HHD's and case fans that I've swapped in and out over the years.

I'd upgrade it to a nettop, but it still does what I need it to so I don't see the point until it finally goes bang. Still runs a minimum 50+ hours a week, and for the first 6 years of its life probably did 100+ hours a week. Still almost silent too, (I change fans a lot).

Flash heavy websites slow it right down, (the National Lottery is the worst) but for most tasks I use it for you can't tell the difference between it and my other machine.

My 'personal' PC is based on an i7 950 with 12GB RAM. Old by many peoples standards here, but I doubt I'll bother replacing it for years, (upgrading GPU's, HDD's/SSD's & fans aside). It does everything I need it to really well. I have a multi-monitor setup, but I only use one for gaming on, and I don't need 100+ FPS to be happy...

Money isn't the issue, I could go and replace both tomorrow morning if I had to.

Er... my 320GB small Hard disk is a few years old as with my DVD ROM. Apart from that, Windows 7 is older than any other part of my machine.
I'm already starting to feel my X58 chip set Mo' Bo' and i7-930 CPU are nearing semi retirement as a Minecraft server or secondary 'surfing' PC.

I built a mate a rig out of my old i5 and GTX460 set up when I upgraded to this.
I don't 'need' a new GPU just yet but want faster turn times in Civ 4 :D

Yes, I'm a pathological serial upgrader.
Bless all of you with the presence of mind enough to resist seizing all before you :)

That's pretty much my upgrade cycle: graphics card every 2 years, whole system every 4.
Will be looking to completely upgrade again sometime next year. At the moment I have my sights on a 3770K, but we'll see where things are next year.

Originally Posted by Scott109I got most of my kit either from ebay or from friends who upgraded.
I ended up with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 4gb DDR2 on an IP35 mobo, and an ATi HD5870. Still fast enough for all my needs, plays battlefield 3 at high settings. Only upgrade i can see is maybe an ssd soon but otherwise i'm very happy with previous generation hardware.

I Have the same setup except for a geforce gtx 580. Because my new motherboard is rma'ed. So with a graphicscard atleast two or three generations ahead and miles away in performance, I find it difficult to believe you can run battlefield 3 at high settings. Battlefield 2 ok fine.... Just because you can start it, doesn't mean you can "run it" implieing that it runs well. But You might just have a 19" monitor wich makes it plausible, or you might talk about dx9 rendering or something :)

Currently sitting on my old computer as said before, with the oldest parts being The Chieftec Dragon Miditower from like 2002, and two Seagate Barracuda 160GB sata disks from the same time, wich I used to run in raid 0 :)

My sig is pretty old.. Although it can still play any new games that come out thanks to the graphics stagnation caused by consoles. I was thinking of an Ivy Bridge + GTX 6X0 upgrade but I have decided to wait for the next Xbox to make an appearance before I upgrade. That way I will be better suited to cope with any new graphical requirements that will only appear with the next console generation.

meh not so good for me stared at 17 with i5 760 + 6870 then 18 i5 2500k +560ti sli. now just a cheep dell inspiron I3 380m 5650m next year? a i7 1366 or 1156 i5-i7 if prices are right and 2 or 1 580gtx

Hardware outran the software, which is why this happens more and more these days.

Don't knock 775.
Some of the old Core2Quads are extremely fast, the Q9550 still hangs with modern mid-range processors, despite being over 3 years old. The only reason I dumped my Q9550 as because I wanted more memory and Sata3. Upgrading from 8 gigs DDR2 to 16gigs would have cost me $300. For that price I could get an I5 2400, an okay board, and 16gigs of DDR3. Updating to SATA 3 was also am issue, most of the Sata3 boards for 775 are junk.

The q9550 now sits as a development server for Android, and it flies! It hangs with (perceived) much stronger systems just fine. I loan it out to other developers and they absolutely LOVE using it.

My old Radeon 4870 was still capable of modern games when I got rid of it about a year ago as well. It was around 2 or 3 years old as well. I went to a 6870 and barely saw any improvement in the games I play. It ended up in a friends desktop she uses for Second Life and it works fantastic for her.

The oldest part I have though is my PSU, a 5 year old PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 (before or around the time they were bought). The thing is still rock solid on a brand new system, and I expect 3-5 more years before it's replaced. Why change it when it works flawlessly.

My rig is a bit more than a year old, there is a ASUS P7P55D-LE socket 1156 motherboard, a Pentium Dual-Core G6950 @ 4.26GHz aircooled with a Freezer Rev.2 and there is 8 gigabytes of Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 memory consisting of 2 sticks. The motherboard is from a waste container, literally, with a one burnt memory slot and lost I/O shield. The HDD I am using is WD 80 gigabyte SATA-300 platter, and half a year ago I upgraded the soundcard to ASUS Xonar Essence STX. I haven't had any kind of bluescreens yet with this configuration, very realiable motherboard with 8+2 phase, I really haven't raised any voltage from stock yet and it runs still stable. Maybe the processor is good one, because it is the earlier C2 revision.

As mentioned above, lack of new gen consoles is limiting the need for newer hardware. The days when PC games dictated the required technology are over. My main rig is over 4 years old, my gfx card was updated 18 months ago, and I added more RAM last year. I can play the new games at near high settings or highest settings - although I must admit I'm no longer heavily into the latest shooter.

I feel positively modern, then. My main desktop is all less than two years old, other than the case, which is around 4, I think.

My wife's rocking my old desktop, with a A64 x2 5400+. It's got an MSI mobo scavenged from work, and inherited the DDR2 from my desktop when my old mobo died and I upgraded to an M5A97 EVO. That was right before BD dropped...if I'd been able to wait, I would have saved a few bucks and stuck with AM3 :\

While the Phenom II X3 720 has a sadly unstable 4th core, it's more than adequate, and I've had it OC'd to 3.7 without a problem (currently at 3.37)

Next is a modern system for the wife - thinking Llano, as it's the perfect fit for her usage. Going to try for a Mini-ITX board and actually make a tiny build this time - my current Mini-ITX has space for 5 3.5" HDDs, so not so tiny.

All the closets in the house are a different story - front closet has several 939 boards (not sure where they came from, tbh), bedroom closet has a couple 486s and a couple 386s...somewhere around here is a 15 lb laptop from the early 80s.

I got my 3.0ghz Nocona Xeon cpus back in 2004, its now 2012... thats 8 years of going.

Had 4gb of DDR 3200 ECC the whole time, The psu died 6 months ago and i recently replaced it.

The graphics card was the only thing that i ever needed to update and that got as far as an GTX260 and from there its just been doing fine. I dont play a lot of modern games anymore due to work and social commitments. How ever it still goes decently.

Ill admit that over the last few years i have noticed it starting to lag behind quite a bit, but i dont mind playing games on medium or low settings. besides Civ5 is a great game :)

Just upgraded from an identical system to the one below kept the 5870 and put in a i72600K at 4.5GHz and 16GB Ram and a vertex SSD, thinking of sticking a 670 in when they go down a little.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott109I got most of my kit either from ebay or from friends who upgraded.
I ended up with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.5Ghz with 4gb DDR2 on an IP35 mobo, and an ATi HD5870. Still fast enough for all my needs, plays battlefield 3 at high settings. Only upgrade i can see is maybe an ssd soon but otherwise i'm very happy with previous generation hardware.

My current PC is for the most part 4 years old. I had to replace the motherboard because it died.
I recently replaced the HHD's and swapped the original 8800GT with a 460GTX while I was in Taiwan and it is still running perfectly.

So far it has been able to handle everything I threw at it, but I might replace the innards for something new next year if I have the funds necessary.

I tend to run older hardware mainly because I don't have the cash to upgrade very often. I usually upgrade when (finally) I cannot put up with the speed of my current system any longer, or a part ups and dies. :D

However I am in the middle of building a new system atm (Have CPU and Mobo to go) as I felt it was time to finally bring things up to date.

I am in the group that can't afford to upgrade every 2 years or so. My PC is very old. The only reason I haven't upgraded is because it still plays new games well at 1920x1080 with no AA. I am still using an AMD 6000+ X2 with my 8800GT 512. The only things that has been upgraded is the PSU and RAM. Oh and the disc drive has been replaced twice.

So even if I did want to upgrade a single part (i do), such as the gfx card. I can't without it being bottlenecked by the CPU. Then I would need a new CPU, but it wont fit on my mobo. So I need a new mobo and RAM. My PSU might be too weak to handle a modern card so add that in with it. Then I would need a fresh copy of Windows.

Basically people are left with 2 choices. Buy a new PC every 2 years, or stick with the old one as long as possible. However even though I defend my choice to hang on to this current PC, I still want/need the latest tech. My PC isn't spectacular but it works well enough.

Originally Posted by SinxarKnightsI am in the group that can't afford to upgrade every 2 years or so. My PC is very old. The only reason I haven't upgraded is because it still plays new games well at 1920x1080 with no AA. I am still using an AMD 6000+ X2 with my 8800GT 512. The only things that has been upgraded is the PSU and RAM. Oh and the disc drive has been replaced twice.

So even if I did want to upgrade a single part (i do), such as the gfx card. I can't without it being bottlenecked by the CPU. Then I would need a new CPU, but it wont fit on my mobo. So I need a new mobo and RAM. My PSU might be too weak to handle a modern card so add that in with it. Then I would need a fresh copy of Windows.

Basically people are left with 2 choices. Buy a new PC every 2 years, or stick with the old one as long as possible. However even though I defend my choice to hang on to this current PC, I still want/need the latest tech. My PC isn't spectacular but it works well enough.

I kinda struck lucky. I was using an AM2 4800+ X2, the mobo went and I replaced it with an AM2+ mobo, which allowed me at a later date to get the Phenom II (With a BIOS update). But it has got to the point where I'm in the same boat as you, need to replace the whole system to upgrade further.

I could upgrade to a phenom but what's the point? I recently upgraded my netbook to a 13" lenovo with an i3 2330 and hd6630. Only upgrading the gpu will improve on that, upgrading to a phenom ii only matches it and whats the point till next gen games come out? Cash is tight and currently I'm still playing around with OS's atm to work out what I want server wise. hard disks will absorb most of my budget this years budget leaving the desktop neglected another year.

Torn between replacing the 4890 which has been and is a fanastic gpu or an ssd. The i7-920 is, I suspect good for another 3years+ ...which is nice.... which is a real problem for the likes of Intel.... we've reach the 'good enough' horizon. If it's good enough, why change it?

the system has been on the go in one form or another since late 2005 with its beginnings underpinned by an asus p5kc (that blew up) with a Pentium e2160, geforce 7800 gt (for sale on ebay) and an audigy sb1394 (also for sale on ebay)

latest addition is a crucial m4 256gb that has had a massive price drop this week, that should be in the post as i type. i might upgrade with a bru-ray writer possiby at some point soon, other than that i honestly cant see any reason to upgrade for a good while yet. maybe in the long term the next gen of gfx cards might be a good upgrade. if theyre more than twice as fast as my cf 5770 combo and use half the power then ill be sold i think.

Only thing I believe needs switching to handle modern games and applications is the GPU but low on money and have to hold on. When possible, switching to GTX580 3GB or GTX680 2GB.
I can run all the games, only BF3 isn't maxed out.

Desktop is quick but crashed far too often i think SSD is on the way out!

Laptop is epic, Battery Can Last for 2/3 Films when on low settings, and when doing 3D rendering stuff about 1and a half hours!
Anybody want to swap / part exchange my desktop graphics card for a workstation card?

Office PC (only used for word and excel, was a printer server briefly):
Pentium 2 @ 1.9ghz
1gb DDR Ram (Recently installed as was two painful with 119mb)
119mb DDR Ram
250 IDE Hard Drive (another one from same broken enclosure.)
The CPU is cooled by the PSU in this old PC.

Laptops:
Philips Freevents X54 (This laptop never died CPU hit over 110c a couple of times, dropped many a time, transported across the country, ran four different OS's and was still an absolute champ at running windows 7. The only thing to ever fail was the dvd drive and that was only after burning way too many dvds for a laptop drive. Sadly it was stolen couple of months back)
Intel centrino duo core 1.6ghz
2gb RAM @667mhz
100gb Hard Drive
Nvidia Mobile 7300

Dell Inspiron 9400 (Brought at a similar time to the X54 this bit of kit was hated despite costing 20% more. Was stolen as well but unluckily for whoever nicked it its running the windows 8 consumer preview. Used this as my demo machine for trying out new OS's as i disliked it too much for it to have any permanent roles)
Intel Centrion Duo 1.8ghz
1gb Ram @667
120gb Hard Drive
ATI 1900 mobile

You don't have to go mental these days, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Ever since I got into the industry I was always spending money on the latest graphics cards.

I remember replacing my 9800 Pro with the X800 Pro and just how much better CS:Source ran.

Or even further back, playing Max Payne on the Geforce 3 Ti500 after trying to play through half of it on my Geforce 2 GTS. I still maintain that the best video card ever made was the Geforce 4 Ti4600. But is that just through rose tinted glasses?

These days you can spend just over £100 and settle for reasonable graphics at 1080.

Originally Posted by MjFrostyI still maintain that the best video card ever made was the Geforce 4 Ti4600. But is that just through rose tinted glasses?

Jumped from a geForce 2 Mx to a geForce 4 Ti 4600, so I agree with you. The was the biggest jow dropping I ever had when upgrading (maybe in paar with the 3DFX). Kept it for years and still running on an old Athlon 64 rig.

While processors and graphics cards go out of date quickly, some bits of hardware will last for years. I can't see anything wrong with a 5 year old case or power supply or DVD drive. And the speakers I have my desktop hooked up to are 12 years old and working fine.

I really HATE spending money :( Mainly because I don't have much of it. But it's just that the games I enjoy the most, really need a decent PC. Stuff like Arma2, if you have good hardware it's a total joy to play and looks amazing, and because there are so few games that I enjoy these days, I have to try to make the most of the few that I do like.

So with that in mind... the last few years I have basically been buying a whole new PC every couple of years, or upgrading it yearly. Everything I have at the moment is pretty decent and a year old at the most, excluding my screen which is about 4 years old and needs an upgrade too because the seal has broken on it.

Hmm, my oldest piece of hardware (thats in use) would have to be the Antec900 case that I got in 2006 (I think) I pulled out of the back room, painted the inside and used to build my WC'ed i7-3930k, GTX580 and 32G of Muskin blackline 1600 ram, 160G-ssd and a 1.5T WD blue..

Though the Shuttle system I built for my mom (got it back when I built her a new i3 system) and gutted the case to build a HTPC out of is probibly older.. the little socket 478 - 2.4Ghz P4 still works though, have it setting on a shelf asembled outside the box with Ubuntu 9.x loaded just for kicks..

I recently built a brand new PC (2600k, 5770 et cetera) to complement my Penryn based system. Before the Sandy Bridge, I had a Dell Dimension 4100 from which housed a lot of outmoded hardware. I think it was like a single core running at just over 1 GHz with 512MB RAM maxed out. Doing anything other than browsing was a chore and multitasking was veritably masochistic as the system would freeze for minutes on end.

The longest computer I had was the one I built in 2000 which was an Athlon 1Ghz with 128Mb RAM (upgraded to 256MB), a G-Force MX2 anda 40GB Quantum HDD. I had that first self-build computer until 2006 when I decided to upgrade to a flat screen TFT.

Unfortunately I need to confess that I went down to the local PC World and bought a lovely LG 19" 1280x1024 TFT which also came with a Packard Bell iExtreme built around a Gigabyte Motherboard (not sure which one), a Pentium Dual Core D920, 1GB DDR2 667Mhz Ram (instantly upgraded to 2GB) and a Radeon X600 running Windows XP Media Centre Edition. I believe I bought a set of 2.1 Logitech Speakers at the same time too.

The Packard Bell computer was actually not bad at all and ran Visual Studio just fine but when Crysis was released it was upgrade time again. My Athlon that I built back in 2000 was still going strong as I donated it to my borther-in-law who was starting to get into computers and gaming...

At the start of 2008 I upgraded to an E6600, 4GB RAM, ATI 2900HD, 2x250GB Hitachi HDD running on a Gigabyte ATX board but I can't remember the model. I later added a xFi Gamer sound card.

The i7 920 is still my main PC although I've since changed the MB over to an RoG Rampage III Gene, added 2 x 256GB M4 SSD and changed to 2 x HP 2210i 1920x1080 TFTs. This computer does everything I throw at it, whether it be playing the latest games, running multiple VM's with Vmware Workstation, developing using Visual Studio 2010 (C#) or running multiple Adobe CS6 Applications.

Therefore as much as I would like too, common sense prevails as I simply can't justify the expense (to myself) of changing over to Sandy/Ivy Bridge when my current computer does everything I could possibly ask it to do.

I normally go through laptop cycles of around three years or so and my latest one is a Dell XPS 15 L502x running a Core i5 2410M, 8GB 1333Mhz RAM, Corasir 120GB SSD, 525M, 1920x1080 TFT etc.

My original Athlon machine dating back to 2000 that I started with finally gave up the ghost last year and my borther-in-law now has a lovely new rig.

Well, my sig: The 930 is dated now, but as I use it for gaming it's perfectly fine. It's not stretched and I don't even run it OC'd - it'll happily do 3.8 on the same low volts when I need more grunt.

I only switched to that last year from a AMD 940BE/4GB/4870.

The 570 is the latest addition around 6 months ago, the SSD before that - I only feel the need to upgrade if I need it. So in the forseeable future it'll only be the GPU and maybe a larger SSD as the CPU and 6GB RAM isn't stretched in the slightest at the mo.

My 2nd rig again does what is required, AM3 quad core, oboard GPU and 4GB RAM - no need to change.

The downstairs PC that the GF uses, mainly for word and internet, now that's the oldest rocking an AMD x2 5000BE on an Abit AX78 with an AMD x800 and an F1 750Gb HDD :D

Now the latter is the one that is starting to show its age a bit but saying that it's not slow. The GF doesn't want it upgrading at the mo though. :'(

Now I can see myself creating the need to upgrade - a larger monitor and thus a beefier GPU would then be essential. :D

I had the money to upgrade to a 920 when it came out but decided against it. For one thing, there weren't any/enough games to get a new PC for (and PC gaming was a mostly grim, somber and depressing landscape of sequels, blockbusters, bad multiplatform ports, and Bobby Koticks, there were times I actually thought money had killed PC gaming). Now that PC games are entering a new golden age, it's FINALLY worth upgrading for me.

Another factor is that I honestly believe you should make your PC last, not buy a new one at the slightest hint of having to turn the detail down a bit. This philosophy has been very helpful, up to a point. I should've upgraded sometime last year but held off due to lack of good games. The only time I really regretted not having upgraded sooner was at Portal 2 launch, and Amnesia. It's bad enough people are fully indulging themselves in a throw-away culture of buying new smartphones every 6-12 months (hello DR Congo civil war!) and crappy middling laptops which are outdated when they come out. If I can balance that out even in the slightest I'm happy to work with outdated hardware. Silicon may be plentiful on planet earth but everything else that goes into electronics and computers ISN'T, and these things have consequences, a fact no one really wants to accept.

Now the time has come to upgrade though. Some good games are coming, Max Payne 3 (hopefully good), Dishonored, BioShock Infinite, HL3, Hitman 5, Alan Wake just came out (don't know if it's good but we'll see) and probably more importantly is the boom in independent developers putting out excellent games and even easily outdoing the AAA-developers here and there. I also have yet to play Mafia 2, Dear Esther and the STALKER sequels, possibly GTA4 (as well as aforementioned Portal 2 and Amnesia).

If I were rich I might get a new system every 3-4 years, but I think 6 years is a better replacement cycle (or at least it ought to be), with perhaps an upgrade or two in the middle.

It's a shame I picked a terrible time to upgrade (budget wise, not game-wise) since both Intel and AMD&nVidia seem to have decided there is no financial crises and people ARE made of money, and priced their hardware accordingly, but otherwise I can't wait to get my hands on it and play some great games both new and from the backlog. (and incidentally also start to learn game development myself, but that's another story).

I built my own pc in February 2008 (following the bit-tech hardware guide) for £800 and it still runs the latest games (e.g. Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, Call of Duty) perfectly well.
The graphics card (8800 GT) stopped working a couple of days ago so I had to replace it.

The lesson? Invest in decent gear and it will last you for years, buy cheap rubbish and you'll spend more money in the long run keeping it running.

My watercooled rig was built early 2008 with a Q6600 which has been running a VCore of 1.9volts ever since! It's had 3 graphics cards due to 1 old age, 1 dying prematurely just out of warranty (shame on you ATI) and the present one that is still alive..

However, the time has come to upgrade from XP and build a new rig! Components are starting to appear - new mobo and i3570K have arrived and I'm just waiting on w/c blocks and a few modding bits before I start a project log :-)

I upgrade my system incrementally, so some parts can be quite old, oldest part I have is a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music, which I think doesn't need upgrading, there's only so much quality sound can get, I even modded it with National Semiconductor Op Amps, apart from that
I have a i7 920 running @ 4.2 Ghz cooled with a Corsair H80, at that clock its pretty damn fast, scores over 7.1 on cenebench (that's only a fraction slower than a 12 core Opteron), I see no reason to upgrade this processor any time soon.
EVGA X58 SLI3 brilliant board
GTX460 1GB @ 850Mhz can run almost any game on highest settings 1080p, I mostly play RTS games like Starcraft II and occasional FPS, BF3 Runs on all high without any problems, maybe if there's game I like that demands more than this card I will upgrade it

12GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM, I do a lot of graphics work, so maybe Ill go up to 24GB
2 x 120GB OCZ Agility III SSD's
My keyboard and mice are really new, a Razer Lycosa and a Razer Abyssus.

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